Cyber Resilience

CVE-2024-4024

Auth Bypass in Gitlab 7.8.0 – 16.9.6

Public PoCAuth Bypass
Published
25 April 2024
Modified
12 December 2024
CVSS Score v3.1 7.3
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:N
EPSS Score 0.15 96th percentile
Risk Priority 65 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2024-4024 is a high-severity Authentication Bypass by Assumed-Immutable Data (CWE-302) vulnerability in Gitlab Gitlab. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique External Remote Services (T1133); ranked in the top 4% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to IA-2 (Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users)) and IA-3 (Device Identification and Authentication) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

An issue has been discovered in GitLab CE/EE affecting all versions starting from 7.8 before 16.9.6, all versions starting from 16.10 before 16.10.4, all versions starting from 16.11 before 16.11.1. Under certain conditions, an attacker with their Bitbucket account credentials…

more

may be able to take over a GitLab account linked to another user's Bitbucket account, if Bitbucket is used as an OAuth 2.0 provider on GitLab.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1133 External Remote Services Persistence
Adversaries may leverage external-facing remote services to initially access and/or persist within a network.
T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
T1040 Network Sniffing Credential Access
Adversaries may passively sniff network traffic to capture information about an environment, including authentication material passed over the network.
T1134 Access Token Manipulation Stealth
Adversaries may modify access tokens to operate under a different user or system security context to perform actions and bypass access controls.
T1185 Browser Session Hijacking Collection
Adversaries may take advantage of security vulnerabilities and inherent functionality in browser software to change content, modify user-behaviors, and intercept information as part of various browser session hijacking techniques.
T1505.003 Web Shell Persistence
Adversaries may backdoor web servers with web shells to establish persistent access to systems.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2024-4784Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-0605Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3102Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3413Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2025-7000Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3949Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-1401Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-2589Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2023-3399Same product: Gitlab Gitlab
CVE-2026-6267Same product: Gitlab Gitlab

Affected Assets

gitlab
gitlab
16.11.0 · 7.8.0 — 16.9.6 · 7.8.0 — 16.9.6 · 16.10.0 — 16.10.4

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 8 hardening rules · 5 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V6.4.4
  • V6.5.4
  • V6.5.5
  • V6.5.7

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Mandates unique identification and authentication of organizational users before access, directly stopping improper authentication.

Requires unique identification and authentication of devices before establishing connections, preventing unauthenticated device claims.

Mandates unique identification and authentication of non-organizational users, directly addressing the weakness for external actors.

Manages authenticators with verification and secure distribution, reducing opportunities for improper authentication.

Requires server-side enforcement of authorizations instead of trusting client-supplied mutable data for authentication decisions.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.AA-03 mostly match
prevents

Strong authentication mechanisms directly avoid reliance on attacker-controlled immutable data.

PR.AA-04 mostly match
prevents

Protecting and verifying identity assertions prevents tampering with data assumed immutable during auth.

PR.AA-01 partial match
prevents

PR.AA-01 supplies and governs credentials/tokens that authentication relies on, removing some weak-credential cases, yet leaves verification logic, missing checks, and protocol flaws untouched.

PR.AA-02 partial match
prevents

PR.AA-02 ensures valid enrollment and unique credential binding, which reduces some improper-auth risks at issuance time but leaves runtime claim verification untouched, so each direction only partially addresses the other.

PR.AA-05 partial match
prevents

Least-privilege authorization policies reduce impact of bypassed authentication but do not address the root flaw.

PR.PS-01 partial match
prevents

PR.PS-01 can enforce auth-related settings via hardened baselines and default reviews, blocking some config-based instances of CWE-287, yet leaves code-level auth flaws untouched so neither direction reaches mostly.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

prevents

Requiring authentication methods whose strength matches the sensitivity of the data and mandating multi-factor authentication directly blocks attempts to access resources without proving identity.

prevents

Verifying user identity before issuing replacement credentials and forcing changes after compromise reduces the likelihood that authentication bypass can be achieved through stolen or weak credentials.

finds

Security testing can discover and block authentication bypasses that rely on mutable data.

degrades

Access-control policy can mandate validation of all identity data, reducing reliance on assumed-immutable fields.

degrades

Identity-management processes can require verification of mutable attributes, mitigating the root cause.

mitigates

Access-rights reviews can detect and revoke rights granted via tampered immutable data.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

Oracle Linux 8 (1 rule)
  • V-248827 OL 8 must not have the rsh-server package installed. prevents CWE-287
RHEL 7 (3 rules)
  • V-204425 The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must be configured so that the SSH daemon does not allow authentication using an empty password. prevents CWE-287
  • V-204442 The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must not have the rsh-server package installed. prevents CWE-287
  • V-204424 The Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system must not allow accounts configured with blank or null passwords. prevents CWE-287
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
  • V-230492 RHEL 8 must not have the rsh-server package installed. prevents CWE-287
Ubuntu 22.04 (1 rule)
  • V-260470 Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, when booted, must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes. prevents CWE-287
Ubuntu 24.04 (2 rules)
  • V-270675 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS when booted must require authentication upon booting into single-user and maintenance modes. prevents CWE-287
  • V-270714 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS must not allow accounts configured in Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) with blank or null passwords. prevents CWE-287

References